biostem

You can get your AoE, but the drone now only comes with about 500 rounds and about 1 hour's worth of fuel to keep it hovering, so I hope you don't plan on getting stuck in prolonged battles. 😉

Yeah - maybe a dual blades/ninjitsu scrapper, with combat teleport or maybe mystic flight if you want to represent the temporary weightlessness from him teleporting. Alternatively, you could do some flavor of /martial combat blaster for burst of speed, then either not take many of the blast attacks, or maybe use them to further differentiate the character from Nightcrawler - like maybe play up their infernal nature w/ some fire or dark blasts...

It's one reason why a lot of my costumes use non-regular face options, because it's hard to get certain alien/non-human skin tones...

Snarky's dietary habits confirmed: He only goes for the Rh- factor...

Yeah, I get it - it's boring and repetitive to upgrade your pets when you resummon them. Now, if you view your minions as your attacks, then think about how a blaster or defender has to click each time they use an attack, whereas you only have to click once to summon your pets, then a 2nd & 3rd time to upgrade them, then you no longer have to click as 6+ entities under your control attack without you having to click for each attack...

I'd argue that it's a matter of degrees: A "healthy" community can recognize a legitimate critique of their respective game, acknowledge it, then either explain the reasoning behind whatever triggered that critique, or have otherwise found ways to work around whatever the reported issue is. At the same time, not every criticism of a game is, in fact, legitimate, and to carry that notion further, someone not liking the explanation that they were given doesn't mean that the criticism they raised is still valid. It's when you say that *any* criticism of a game is verboten, and the only types of conversations that are allowed must be glowing endorsements of the game and/or dev/mod team are allowed, that you get "toxic positivity". The decisions made by the dev team are routinely discussed and derided, so I don't see that as being the case, here...

Enforcing a "you're only allowed to say good things about the game" policy is just as bad, if not worse, than prohibiting criticism...

I'm starting to think this thread will have more of a "saga" to it than the original proposal...

And for Easter: "BoltBunny"

In honor of St. Patty's Day... "Emerald Chance"

Well, they'd have to be tweaked to have said HP bars and be targetable.

The "minor elementals" and "whirlwinds" would act like the current T1 and T2 pets, for purposes of how many you get as you level up. The remaining 2 summons would basically summon the 2 and 1 pet, as described by those powers.

Correct. This set doesn't get pet upgrades. Instead, you get more permanent pets. I don't think it'd be OP, when compared to gang war or soul extraction...

More people means more chances of them being a jerk. It's just a numbers game. I'm sorry you had a bad experience. If it's any consolation, I don't care what you're playing, when I'm leading a team, so long as you actually contribute, (and even then, it doesn't have to be a large contribution, just don't sit there)...

It doesn't need to apply to everyone and under all conditions, but it will happen. This isn't an either-or scenario, though. It's not like a significant proportion of players are saying "if only I could get my T9 pet *now*, I wouldn't PL ever"... Unfortunately, "it's fun" is not a good enough reason to throw out any semblance of balance, progression, or the weight/cost of having to invest in that character and work up to those "good" powers...

Except it won't have that effect - it'll only serve to have people ROFL-stomp that low level content, if they don't just PL said character instead. The O.G. devs have already made fitness inherent and lowered the level and requirements to take a travel power, in an effort to further empower low-level characters, and that still didn't get people to consistently run low-level content...

You can summon and control various elemental forces. Unlike other MM primaries, you cannot upgrade your summons beyond their initial abilities. You can, however, call upon more permanent entities than similar MM primary sets. What an elemental summoner can do, however, is to target their minions with their own attacks, to temporarily empower them, (granting a temporary tohit, damage, and damage resistance bonus). Note: The direct attacks would *not* grant the user the set-specific buffs, like tidal force or seismic force. The buffs also would *not* stack, only be refreshed, so there is no need to worry about taking all the blast powers if you didn't want to. 1. Aqua bolt: As per the water blast power when targeting enemies, or grants the aforementioned tohit, dmg, and res buff to your own pets. 2. Summon minor elementals: Calls a Clould of Ice, Fireball, or Lightning storm, as per the Animus Arcana entities. 3. Entomb: As per the seismic blast power, again with the buff to dmg, tohit, and res for your pets. 4. Summon minor whirlwinds: Calls forth a dust devil and water spout, (as per the Scirocco and Leviathan Mastery powers, respectively) 5. Jet Stream: As per the storm blast power, again, granting the buff when used on your own pets. 6. Summon elementals: Calls forth an animated stone and jack frost, (as per the earth control and ice control powers). 7. Rain of Fire: As per the fire blast power, (including the minion buff). 8. Summon greater elemental: You call forth a "lava elemental" - Uses the magmite lord as its basis. 9. Pool of elemental empowerment: Uses one of the location-based power FX, (perhaps tide pool's), which slows enemies caught in it, reduces their defense and damage resistance, and occasionally pulses, applying the empowerment buff to your minions.

While not a perfect comparison, if you have access to Champion Online's "Freeform Slots", you can basically pick and choose whatever powers you want, from any power set/category, (with some pre-requisite restrictions), and let me tell you, it results in very boring "tank mages", which can endlessly spam the equivalent of high-tier blasts. It's no different, IMO, than enabling cheat codes - fun at first, but becomes boring quickly and you lose interest. Now, the time period between "oh wow this is so cool" to "now I'm bored" will vary from person to person, but without the sense of "earning" those higher-tier power, or having to make decisions with at least some ramifications, helps connect you to that character...

How important do you folks find the T1 zombies to be for necro? I love the grave knights & lich, but have always found the zombies to be "meh"? I guess they'd serve as more fodder and distractions...

Well, the OP did specify "No IOs", but my concern would more be about things like blaster maintains, controller T9 pets, MM T3 pets, or, heck, a MM gaining access to their 2nd upgrade early on is a huge buff to their pets...

You really should specify which dollars you want, as you may get $2 in Zimbabwean Dollars... 1 ZWL = 0.003106 USD

Like the original dev team or not, that "initial design philosophy" is the entire reason CoH still has a following. I'm not saying that things can't be changed or added to/replaced, but whenever you do so, it must be in the broader context of how the game functions across all level ranges. The OP may not "break the game", but what it will do is dramatically alter the rate of progression and how lower level enemies, which are geared toward similarly less-powerful player characters, interact...

No, but having no flaws is one tell-tale sign that you may be dealing with one, but that's fine, because the person you responded to very clearly pointed out that they were NOT saying Ms. Liberty or Longbow were Mary Sues. Further, having a "moral code" doesn't make one good, either - it's just a set of rules of conduct - but those could include things like "kill anyone who doesn't think as I do"...

It also diminishes the point/advantage/weight of taking a particular power set as a primary vs a secondary...

You're only just telling me this is bad, now???